Donner and Blitzen Wears Night Vision Goggles!!!!

Soon Santa will he hitching up his reindeer to his sleigh to fly around the world dropping presents here and there. His stealthy reindeer will be sporting built in night visions goggles.  Most of us have heard about how Rudolph saved the day by using his shiny nose to light the way, but new research shows reindeer have built in night vision goggles which makes Rudolph's nose useless.

I've had people ask me what is the difference between reindeer and caribou, so reindeer are a domesticated animal and a caribou is a wild animal. Reindeer tend to be much small and are a slightly different color than their wild caribou cousins.


Caribou live in very extreme climates of Alaska, Scandinavia, and Russia where there is 19-20 hours of sunlight in the summer and 5-7 hours of daylight in the winter.  Caribou have an very cool adaption which helps them to deal with these light extremes.  They actually change the way the tapetum in the back of their eyes work. Click here for a cool picture of the color of their eyes in the different seasons. Like many animals which come out a night or are most active during the early morning and late evenings they have a tapetum, a reflective layer of cells in the back of their eyes, which allows their eye to collect the most amount of light making it easier for them to see.  Caribou take this one step further and through creating more or less pressure in their eyes, depending on the season, pack the tapetum cells closer together or spread them out. Spreading them out during the brighter summer season allows them to reflect more light back out through their eyes, but in the winter caribou increase the pressure in their eyes causing the tapetum cells to pack closer together. These closely packed cells allow caribou to catch more light making it much easier for them to see in the darkness. Adjustable night vision goggles!   

So have no fear whatever the reindeer the caribou will be able to see their way to your house to drop off those presents.

More fun stuff about caribou.
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/caribou/
http://www.livescience.com/17621-surprising-facts-reindeer-caribou.html
http://www.fws.gov/alaska/nwr/arctic/carcon.htm
http://www.mnh.si.edu/arctic/html/caribou_reindeer.html

Leaf Envy....

I was recently reading a publication from the Smithsonian which pointed me to all sorts of cool digital projects to help to connect people and science. I won't bore you with the specifics of the ebook, but if your so inclined you can read it for yourself by clicking here.

One project they were involved in is Leafsnap. These super smart people have designed an app for all of us who have looked at a plant and thought "what's that?" It is remarkably simple, snap a picture of a leaf and the app will search it's database and give you a list of possible plants. Click on one of the plant names and BAM a snapshot of information on where it grows, what the habitat is like, and when it blooms, and so much more! There are some limitations to the app right now, such as it is not available for Android and the plants are limited to mainly the Eastern United States. But, I played with it on a friends iPad and it worked pretty well.  "Do they have something like that for bug?" my friend asked.  "Umm, no." I replied.

While yes, there are a number of bug related apps out there (click here for a list of 5 bug apps), there are none where you to snap a picture of a bug and get a list of possible suspects. A number of years ago a software company sent the company I worked for at the time a prototype of a program which would allow us to take a microscope picture and it would identify it. So, we grabbed a bunch of bugs and sat down to run it through its paces. LET DOWN! See bugs use all sorts of mimicry to make them look like some thing poisonous or painful to a predator. It is tiny little differences which set them apart. For example, if I were to show you these two bugs side by side what would you say they were?

 

Having done this to countless school teachers and chaperones in front of their students, all of them say bees. Wrong! Only one of these is a bee the other is  a hover fly or flower fly. The fly (the bug on the left) mimics the bee (the bug on the right) to avoid getting eaten by predators. 

If you look really closely at the bug on the left you would notice some subtle differences. 

1) This bug only has one pair of wings where bees have two.
2) Flies have rather large eyes which appear to cover most of their head and bees have a definite space between them.
3) Right behind the fly's wings you will find halters or calypters.

In this picture of a crane fly you see two qtip like structures right behind the wings before you get to the last pair of legs. 

In this picture of a fly you see the large flat disks, calypters, right behind the wings.
Both the calypters and halters both help the fly to change direction in flight, but make them hard for a computer program to correctly identify these bugs. Until computers programs become better at seeing tiny little differences in insects we will just have to keep identifying our insects the old fashion way with taxonomic keys. 

I break for Porcupines!

In a fit of boredom I was looking at the roadkill tracking websites for California and Maine.  I wasn't overly surprised by some of what I saw on their sites, for instance California has a lot of dead racoons, skunks, and opossums.  But when I looked at the Maine site I was saddened by what I saw, lots of dead porcupines. I have a soft-spot for porcupines because they get a bad rap. Really who can resist this level of cuteness in a woodland creature?  I know what your thinking they have razor sharp spikes that they can throw at you, how can you think it's cute?  First of all let's do a little experiment. Stand up and move away from whatever your reading this on and in your best headbanger move bang your head forward making sure not to hit anything.  Are strands of your hair stuck into the nearby wall? No, I didn't think so.  A common urban myth is that porcupines can throw their quills, those spiky things on their backs, which is not true. They can throw their quills about as well as you can throw your hair across the room after all a quill is nothing more than modified hair.  Porcupines when they feel threatened will whip their tails around and whack at their attacker leaving them full of some of those 30,000 quills. Porcupines will also arch their backs, raise their quills in a defensive posture, and shake when their attacker gets near increasing the chances of one or more of the quills having enough force to get lodged in their attacker.

These quills are a work of art when it comes to animal defense. They are hollow and barbed (hooked) at one end which allow them to stick easily into anything. Once these quills are embedded in something warm they expand making them harder to remove. Muscle twitching also helps to drive the quill deeper into an animals or human's skin. So the best thing to do if you end up with a porcupine quill in you is to relax that muscle and pull the quill out with a pair of pliers. If you forgot to bring your first aid kit with you have no fear porcupine quills have a antibacterial fatty layer on them, so you have a little while to get back to where you can was your wound and put a bandage on. 
Quills are not just good for defense they also serve the purpose of helping the porcupines to float. Quills are hollow in the inside and since porcupines have about 30,000 it acts as a built in life preserver which is useful to an animal which is an avid swimmer.

So why are their so many dead porcupines in Maine? Probably because their is so much great habitat for them there. They love to eat hemlock, birch, maples, and skunk cabbage just to name a few.  They roam through forests and wetland areas following their nose to tasty bits.  While they have a great sense of smell they have bad eyesight.  Porcupines also have a love of salt which has led them to eat such crazy things as outhouse seats and wooden canoe paddles.  During some times of the year the porcupines maybe drawn to the roads because we humans salt road surfaces and porcupines being slow moving dark colored nocturnal animals motorists just don't have enough time to get out of their way.  The rest of the year they just fall victim to trying to cross the roads to get over to a preferred foods and not moving fast enough.

Want to know more:
http://animal.discovery.com/mammals/remove-porcupine-quills.htm
 http://www.outdoors.org/publications/outdoors/2009/wildwisdom/porcupine-bounty.cfm
http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/porcupine.htm
http://theiwrc.org/kids/Facts/Mammals/porcupine.htm

TURKEYS!!!

Staying in with the holiday spirit I thought I would wax poetic about about turkeys since this time of year I see them everywhere. Wild turkeys travel in a gang, like this one.

I ran into these three turkeys while out for a walk in one of Madison, WI city parks. Only thing was they were not alone.

THEY JUST KEPT COMING! All told there were 16 turkeys lurking in the woods.  I did my best to give them their space, but wherever I went they were pretty close behind. I zigzagged they zigzagged, I turned around and jogged back down the trail they jogged down the trail after me.

Now most people I know would not be worried by this, but me I'm scared of turkeys. You might say it is an irrational fear, but have you ever seen the spikes on the back of a turkey's leg?
Males use these formidable spikes to injure or kill other male turkeys during mating season. So imagine a large 6-24 pound turkey flying at your head with spikes a blazing, scary thought am I right?  Did I mention they can fly at speeds of up to 54 miles an hour?

The coolest fact I know about turkeys is using their gizzard they can crush 24 English walnuts at once.  The gizzard is a small muscular pouch in the turkey's neck which helps to break up their food into smaller pieces for digestion. This pouch often has small rocks or pebbles in it to help crush anything in it.

While the wild turkey's domestic cousin maybe fairly dumb, if you watch a group of wild turkeys you'll find they can be fairly inquisitive.  Joe Hutto’s  book and also the Nature documentary he talks about his experiences raising wild turkeys and watching their inquisitive nature. While I am not advocating adopting wild animals the documentary makes for interesting watching.


Keep your eyes peeled the next time you take a walk in the woods for smart, fast flying, spike caring heavy birds!  Just watch out for your head.

My Winter Slump......

The last few days were wonderful daytime highs in the 60 light breeze life was good. This morning I woke up to what seemed like a awesome fall morning, which lasted all of three hours. By 11:00am this morning the cloud celling had lowered the wind started to pick up and the snow started falling once again. Don't get me wrong I love going for walks in the snow enjoying the peaceful solitude and the subtle squeak of the snow under my boots, but this is our 4th significant snow so far this fall and as far as I'm concerned it is a little too early for me to be seeing this much snow. 

This somehow got me to thinking about animals who never EVER have to wake up on a particular cold morning stuff themselves into 4 layers of clothes and trudge off to work.  Marmots and ground squirrels I salute you for being the smartest animals on the planet. Marmots and ground squirrels spend a whopping  8 months of the year in hibernation.  Marmots generally crawl from their burrows in mid-May. From Mid-May through early September their days are spent eating food and catching some rays. About 44% of the time they are above ground in the morning hours is spent basking in the sun which helps them to get the most energy out of the food they eat. 

Marmot awaits hikers on the trail.

 

 

Now life is not all rosy for my marmot friends since they are a little on the portly side, as far as rodents go, there are a bunch of animals just waiting to eat them for lunch. Hawks roam the skies waiting to catch one alone. Coyotes, foxes, and weasels looking for a snack sniff out their underground burrows and dig them up.  Marmots are also trolling the talus slopes looking for nutrients just like all the other animals. Most of the animals nutrients comes from the food they eat or animals bones and antlers they gnaw on. However, there is the occasional added bonus from hikers who pee on the edges of the trail.  Yes, marmots and other animals will eagerly eat your pee marked ground in order to get nutrients they need to survive. And I'll throw this out there as a word of caution yes, marmots are small other animals which will also go after your pee are not and are WAY more dangerous, so please no marking your territory along the edges of the trail.

Two marmots fight over pee soaked ground.

 

 



By mid-August my marmot friends are beginning to feel sluggish and by early September have crawled back into their burrows for the last time until next year.  Around this time the weather starts to change in the high country. Stiff 45-50 mile an hour winds buffet the treeless slopes as the snow starts to fall from a cold grey sky.

Sleep well my marmot friends and may you safely avoid the weasels and coyotes who would love to eat you as you sleep. 

Humm.......Maybe Pika Next?

Maybe it is because I have been sick the last few days or maybe I have been in the woods too long, but my mind has been running amuck with ideas.  It all started when I read this article in The Guardian the other day.   I'll be the first to admit I don't understand the whole point of this experiment, but maybe it would help with research on pikas.

Pika are fun little critters only 6-8 inches in size and they are cute!  (Don't believe me check out the photos others have posted on Tumblr.)  In my life I have seen exactly one, yep one.  Not from lack of trying on my part either I've hiked high into the alpine regions of many parks and yet have seen only one of the elusive little buggers.

Problem with trying to see one is they are shy creatures, probably because there are so many things looking to eat them like golden eagles, weasels, foxes, coyotes, etcetera.  Also they don't do well with heat.  Their normal body temperature is 105F degrees and if their body temperature gets to close to 109F they can die.   There is a lot of research being conducted on how climate change is effecting populations of pika and the outlook is not good in most cases.  But with the help of ordinary people scientists have been able to map 139 new pika locations.

So what has this got to do with glow in the dark rabbits you ask?  What if in response to a warming climate they are foraging more in the evening and less during the day?  Small brown animals out in the evening would be very hard to spot.  Since pika are the smallest member of the rabbit order would it be possible to insert the jellyfish gene into pikas the same way they did to the rabbits?  I'm not suggesting we do it to a lot of them just 4 here and there just to see if they are changing foraging patterns in response to a warmer climate.

Just a thought.

From A Kid's Toy To Science Experiment.

It is always fun for me to see how scientists get inspired. A former coworker of mine was inspired to study bees after watching a beekeeper remove a colony of wild bees from her house in an old record player case.

Well now it seems that a child's toy magic wand has inspired one scientist to look a little closer at the spider webs and how they work.   This research will make spiders even cooler than they already are.

Most people don't realize that spider webs are a very time consuming process and that every day most spiders consume their webs and then respin  them all over again. After all you can't catch a tiny gnat for lunch if there is a hole in your web large enough for it to fly through.  Since these webs take a lot of time and resources to build spiders want to protect them from possible damage.  Our human eyes sadly do not allow us to see spider webs really well unless the sunlight is hitting it at just the right angle, but to birds these webs stick out like giant neon signs warning them to pull up, go around, get out of the way!  Some spiders also create doorbells, a strand of silk between one of the spider's legs and the web, so they don't always have to sit in the center. As soon as the web starts moving doorbell rings and the spider darts onto the web and grabs hold of it's prey before holes get ripped in the web. 

Did you ever wonder how a spider can walk across a web and not get stuck but a fly gets stuck like super glue?  The secret is they have a coating on the hairs and their feet which creates a nonstick surface also by walking slowly across the web they have much less of a chance of getting stuck to it as they spin their webs and as they catch their prey. As a spider moves across their webs they are using their  many eyes to keep track of shadows and movement near by. While a spider can have anywhere from no eyes (cave dwelling spiders) to eight eyes they don't see very well and can mainly make out shadows and movement not what it is that is causing it.

Spiders are oh so cool.

And The Toughest Animal In The World Is.......

Every now and then someone will ask me either what my favorite animal is or what I think the toughest animal in the world is. Asking a naturalist this is a kin to asking a mother to pick a favorite child.   However the more I learn about this little bird the more impressed I am and it may be making the list of my top 10 coolest animals ever.

Standing a whopping 6-8 inches tall and weighing not much more than 1.5-2.4 ounces is the American dipper. 

 

 

 

This little pint sized song bird spends a lot of it time under water looking for aquatic insects.  Not just any old kind of water FAST moving water.  (Think of a human trying to stand up in some super heavy whitewater while trying to grab a cheeseburger off the bottom.)  To accomplish this herculean feat they have mighty long toes with some sizable toenails which allow them to grip rocks and pebbles underneath the water allowing them to walk along the bottom.  They  also have their own built in goggles called a nictating membrane which helps to protect their eyes from floating debris. Probably the most important adaptation is the extra-large preen gland which secrets oil to help waterproof their feathers.  Dippers can often be seen standing on rocks bobbing up and down. Scientists really don’t know why they bob up and down it may help them to see well.

 

 

Also these little birds are members of the polar bear club.  Then the weather starts getting colder and the rivers and streams they feed in start to freeze to they head for warmer climates.

 

Nope they just head for the nearest free flowing steam and plunge right in for a snack! 

This might just be the toughest animal anywhere!


Dippers can often be seen standing on rocks bobbing up and down. Scientists really don’t know why they bob up and down it may help them to see well. They are well   Dippers are active in this area even in winter seeking out streams which are not frozen. anding a

EVERYONE OUTSIDE!!!!

Over the last two weeks I have been stuck indoors in what is known as seasonal training. I define this a torture and I'm sure it is against the Geneva Convention to keep people normally used to being outside confined in a small space being made to watch hour after hour of PowerPoint presentations.   So after almost two weeks of this I needed to get OUT!  After a BBQ the other night I grabbed my camera and walked about 1/4 mile away from our hotel to a field just outside the entrance to Glacier National Park. I plunked my butt in the middle of a field full of flowers and sat there watching the sunset behind the famous Lewis Thrust Overfault.

I hadn't been there more than a few minutes before a coyote on his nightly rounds stumbled apon me.  He cocked his head a little to the side and gave me this look of "what are you doing in my field?"  After a few glances he went back on his way.  The sun sank lower towards the horizon painting the sky a vibrant pink and throwing the last rays of sun onto the snowfields.

 

I sat there and watched the dying light play across the sky, suddenly becoming aware of a commotion taking place about a mile down the road. A large female moose lumbered from the willows and strolled down the street ignoring the paparazzi gathered on either side.  I glanced back to the sunset in front of me and who should appear but mister fox with a mouth full of food heading probably back to his den site.

 

 

With the chill in the air growing more intense and twilight giving way to night I strolled my way back to the lodge not realizing I was being watched from behind. As I neared the lodge a coworker shouted

 


from the third floor balcony that there was a moose behind me.  I turned and sure enough there bolting for the nearby hillside was a female moose suddenly startled by a sudden group of two legged animals in her path.

This week get outside and find a spot near a pond, in a field, or even a city park. You never know who you might see. 

"Humans Tear Down These Fences!"

Last week I spent a lot of time driving across North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana and there was nothing sadder than a group of pronghorns lined up near a fence just staring at it wishing and hoping they could just get on the other side.

For those of you who have never seen a pronghorn let me introduce you to this fine fellow.

Male Pronghorn in Yellowstone By Jen Heindel

 

Male and female pronghorn look similar, both have horns, but the easiest way to tell a male and female apart is by looking for a black patch of fur where you could imagine Elvis' lamb-chop sideburns, these are the males. Female's chin is all white no black patch.

 

Pronghorns are an interesting groups of animals because they are just so different from anything else. Pronghorns are antelope, but they are not like any other antelope on the planet, so scientist put them in a group all by themselves. Pronghorns evolved during a time when we still had very large "prehistoric" like cats roaming the grass lands, so they developed great speed to keep from becoming lunch.  Some reports say they have been clocked running at sustained speeds of 60 miles per hour, but most researchers put it a little closer to a little over 50 miles per hour. Now before you get any ideas about challenging a pronghorn to a race with you at the wheel of your car remember this; the pronghorn is the most laidback animal on the planet. Most of the time there are wild animals so unpredictability is their middle name. Fifty miles an hours is fast enough to outrun all of today's predators which roam the plains with them. They are built for great speed, but sadly lack the ability to jump. All the other ungulates (deer, elk, moose) can all jump fences quite easily, but sadly the same is not true for the pronghorn. Put a fence in front of  a pronghorn and they will have no choice but to walk the whole fence looking for an open gate.

 

There is another unique thing about pronghorns which makes them different from all horned animals. Horns are made out of keratin, the same stuff your fingernails are made from, and grow a little bit each year adding on another distinct growth ring.  But pronghorns have to be different, they shed their outer sheath of the antler each year.  The new horn is actually growing under the part which is falling off.  

 

Pronghorns are the coolest animals found on the prairie.

 

 

 

Female pronghorn on the left, male on the right. By Jen Heindel

 

 

For more information:

 

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/antelope/



http://www.wcs.org/saving-wildlife/hoofed-mammals/pronghorn.aspx

http://www.gpnc.org/pronghor.htm



Call Out The CSI Team!

There have been a series of murders in the yard over the last week leaving me feeling much distress.  I currently live in the suburbs of a small Midwestern city where the space between houses is about six feet at the most and much of the surrounding farm fields have been converted into condo subdivisions. With that said I have become sort of attached to some of the wildlife which does exist in the yard.

Murder #1 The Robins

The first animals to be murdered were a nest of unhatched  baby robins. Mr. & Mrs. Robin lovingly placed their nest in the branches of the pine tree in the front yard defending it from all would be intruders and those of us who dared walk near it to look at the blooming flowers. She then laid a clutch of 3 bright blue eggs and that's when things went to poop.  The nest now lays overturned under the pine tree the three blue eggs each of which has a tell tail beak sized hole in it. 

Murder #2 Mc Squidgey

Now Mc Squidgey was a rather cunning grey squirrel who spent the winter eating an entire HUGE block of peanut suet, put out for the birds. Once she had polished off the big one she ate not just one but 2 smaller suet blocks!

Here is Mc Squidgey doing her best to scare people sitting at the kitchen table.



Murder #3 Pfeffernusse

Pfeffernusse was a rather large cottontail rabbit who spent much of the winter eating seeds, which the birds kicked onto the ground from the birdfeeder. Pfeffernusse would spend cold stormy nights under the stacked lawn chairs or the edge of the chimney.

Now I know what your thinking; how do I know that the other grey squirrels or rabbits that move through the neighborhood are not my beloved backyard friends? Simple they had very distinct markings on them.   Pfeffernusse had a stripe of missing hair on the middle of it's back on the left side and Mc Squidgey had bright white ears where as all the other squirrels have grey ears.

So what happened to them?

Murder #1 The Robins

Culprit: The European Starling. 
Bias Alert! I hate these birds! I may or may not have killed off some baby starlings my roommates had found laying in the lawn of our place of employment. I suggested feeding it to the raptors we had at the rehabilitation clinic, but they decided we needed to feed them and raise them. So for weeks we took turns feeding them mash (as prescribed by our wildlife biologist), changing the poopy paper, and keeping them warm. Until one day I running late for work, and forgetting it was my morning to feed the creeps, threw a hand full of mealworms into a cup of water. After the wiggling stopped I figured I was safe and grabbed the tweezers to stuff them in the gullets of the two noisy houseguests.  Full, I headed to work not giving them another thought until later that night I was accused of murder. See I hadn't left the meal worms in the cup of water long enough to actually kill them I merely had stunned them. And during the day they had chewed their way out of the starling's stomachs killing them (as confirmed by our wildlife biologist).   Now before you get all upset starlings are not native to the United States they were brought here in 1890 and released into Central Park. They are extremely aggressive bird which has been know to steal nest from other birds throw the eggs over the side and take over the nest as their own. Starlings will also peck open and eat the eggs of the nest they are taking over, but mainly they feed on insects.

Murder #2 Mc Squidgey
Culprit: Raptor or Heart Attack

I'm not a hundred percent sure what may have happened, but I'm sure it had something to do with the weight gain from eating too many suet block over the winter.  There are a lot of red-tailed hawks living in the neighborhood which I have seen chase after smaller speedier squirrels.  Yes, there has been a recent squirrel meets tire incident, but I checked no white ears.  So, if your a raptor cruising the hood who would you eat a small speedy squirrel or a fat slow moving squirrel.

Murder #3 Pfeffernusse
Culprit: Vulpes vulpes

I found clumps of rabbit hair while moving the yard and after I was done took a stroll through the neighborhood looking for headless rabbits hanging in trees. Didn't find any, so that ruled out the local area raptors.  Confused? I'll explain raptors, smaller than a great horned owl, will feed on prey items the size of a rabbit where they kill it because they are generally too heavy and awkward to carry to a perch to feed on.  However, raptors like the great horned owl or larger can carry heavy prey to a nearby tree and then feast until they are full leaving the rest to rot in the tree.  I once worked on Gallop's Island in the middle of Boston Harbor and often found some of our slower rabbits headless hanging in trees killed the night before by the population of Great Horned owls on the nearby Lovells Island.  Since I found hair, but no body, I checked nearby tall trees for left over rabbit. A few days later after coming back from a walk I saw a most curious sight. Vulpes vulpes bold as brass trotting through the neighbors back yards!

    Red Fox In Yellowstone National Park by Peter Zuzga

 

 

I tore out the back door thinking I was suffering from heat induced delusions only to hear the neighbor's scream as he trotted past them.  COOL!!! I know there are red foxes, coyotes, and occasionally wolves in the area, but I have never seen them EVER.  It is entirely possible my dear rabbit became lunch for the local fox and he was probably in the area scouting for another meal when he was spotted by the two legged locals.  I'm hoping to see him or her again  (goodness knows there are still many many many more rabbits to eat) because watching them pounce is pretty fun.  Feast well my friend!

 



Red Fox Pounce by Peter Zuzga

 

Murders Solved. Case Closed. 









Rub John Harvard’s Foot Without Fear?

If I say the words Periodic Table of Elements what is your first reaction? Sweaty hands, dry mouth, panic attack, horror flashbacks to high school or college classes of hours of boring lectures?  I will admit right now I hated chemistry in high school and college. I almost flunked out of college because of my inability to remember if certain elements bonded covalently or how may p or s orbitals they had in their atoms.  And truly the only thing I remember from high school chemistry was our chemistry teacher accidentally setting the Periodic Table of Elements chart on fire the first day.   

However, I am beginning to come around to the fun side of the Periodic Table of Elements since reading The Disappearing Spoon. I thought that the only fun you could have with the Periodic Table of Elements could be listening to the renowned mathematician and professor Tom Lehrer sing his song “The Elements.” (If you haven’t heard it click the link.)  I applaud the author, Sam Kean, for his ability to collect and use so many FUN stories and information about the Periodic Table of Elements. Do you know why  Gandhi hated iodine, how solving a math equation wrong and then sending your wrong answer to Einstein can win you a Nobel Prize, why  a noted astronomer in 1564 who lost his nose in a sword duel had it replaced with one made out of silver, and what’s the deal with copper piping?  

Sam Kean’s section on the oligodynamic properties of copper and silver got me to thinking about the time I once visited the famous statueof three lies while showing a friend around Boston. We stood on the Harvard campus watching students and others needing luck, rub, lick, and kiss John Harvard’s left foot.  Yuck, I though why would you touch that after watching someone lick the statue? Millions of germs spreading from person to person……..or maybe not?  There are certain metals in the Periodic Table of Elements; silver, copper, aluminum, zinc, and tin which have been shown to kill certain bacteria, algae, and fungi within a few hours.  As these organisms move across the surface of these metals they pick up metal atoms which once they get into the cells disrupts their metabolism and in some cases messes up their cell’s DNA causing the cells to die. Scientists call this the oligodynamic effect. Scientists still are not 100% sure how the oligodynamic effect works but people have been using and experimenting with different metals since 1000 BC.  People in 1000 BC left river water in silver pots sitting in the sun then filtered the water to remove sand and bits of plant matter and found the water was drinkable.  Silver coins were dropped into milk jugs to keep the milk from spoiling as people moved westward across America.  Since 1976 copper tubes have been put in air conditioners to kill harmful bacteria growing in the warm moist environment.  One recent research paper shows copper can kill drug resistant salmonella in water in 4-8 hours, while tin is less effective at killing nasty organisms which make us humans deathly ill. 

Back to John Harvard.  His statue is made up of bronze which is a mixture of copper and tin, both have oligodynamic properties.  A group of researchers showed bronze plates (94% copper 6% tin) to be slower at killing harmful organisms when submerged in contaminated water then pure copper plates.  So, I think this callsl for an experiment! All I need to do is fly to Boston swab John Harvard’s left foot and grow the swab on a culture medium plate (something which looks a little like Jello which scientists grow bacteria on) to figure out what types of bacteria are on his foot.  While the bacteria are growing keep everyone from touching the foot and then at 4 hour intervals swab his foot and grow those swabs to see if the oligodynamic properties of bronze help to kill all the nasty stuff I think maybe on John’s foot.  If the oligodynamic effect works maybe his foot would self-sterilized by morning if no one touched it at night. Who knows? Anyone near Harvard who has access to a bacteria lab and who can figure out how to control for all the experimental variables I have not thought of please run this experiment and then tell me what your results are. I wait with baited breath! 

Do Elk Fight In Heaven?

This is the first thought which came to mind when I read in a friend's Facebook post of the passing of the famous (or infamous) elk #10.  #10 was killed by a local wolf pack at the ripe old age of 15-18 years old.

                                                             #10 Copyright Peter Zuzga

It was with much anticipation I spent my first season in Yellowstone National Park waiting for the elk rut to start. Late August I started hearing the buzz among staff: “Monster was up at Africa Lake last night” or “#6 was seen out by the high bridge”, this news was often met with a mixture of excitement and dread among my coworkers who had been there many more seasons than I.  I had heard stories of Mammoth Hot Spring’s most famous elk the car smashing duo of #6 and #10, but surely I thought these stories were greatly exaggerated. Right?  I hadn’t seen any bull elk all summer, and while yes I had watched visitors get chased and charged by female elk I had no idea what I was in for.

Bull or male elk stick to themselves up in the high country protecting their growing antlers and packing on the pounds all summer long.  Come late August or sometimes not until mid-September, depending on the weather, the bull elk head to their favorite breeding grounds to round up a harem of female elk to mate with.  Once a bull has his harem he has to protect them and keep them at all costs. Bulls can and will steal other females from their rivals.   A bull elk can lose as much as half of their body weight during the rut trying to ward off would be rivals and keep their harems together.  But bull elk have an arsenal of ways to keep their harems together and I have witnessed it all while trying, often in vain, to keep the elk and the tourist separated.

1)      The Antlers: I use to tell tourist that the rut was all about the antlers.  The bull with the most impressive rack wins the females. Female elk will size up the health of the males in the area by the size and symmetry of their antlers.  Male elk will use their antlers to destroy shrubbery, rip up grass, and in the case of elk #6 and #10 bash out car windows, break out trail lights, rip off mufflers, and chase visitors all as a way of showing other male elk how tough they are and impress lone female elk.  #6 chased me twice and I watched him destroy car after car which stopped to take his picture. (65 cars in his last mating season.)

 

#6

 

2)      The Bugle: An elk bugle carries for ¼ of a mile or more depending on the wind conditions. It is by far the easiest way to tell where the elk are if for some reason you can’t see them.  Bull elk spend A LOT of time, especially in the evening and nighttime hours, bugling.  Bugling is the elks way of saying “this is my spot go find your own and I WILL defend my spot!” The sexually mature males have a bugle which starts low (almost sounds like a growl) and ends high. Younger males have mainly the high pitched end of the bugle.

 

                                        Copyright Peter Zuzga

3)      The Size up: Every now and then two bulls will size each other up by doing what’s called paralleling. They will run or trot alongside each other antlers laid back almost horizontal to their backs sizing each other up. They may do it two or three times and then one elk will decide the other guy is bigger and wander away on his own.  Sometimes when the “looser” makes his way back into the ceded turf the “victor” will give chase at speeds of 30 miles an hour until the looser has been driven far enough away.  Every so often when two elk are sizing each other younger smaller males will sneak into their harems and mate with their females and make a run for it when they see the big guy coming back.

4)      The Fight: In six seasons of watching elk during the rut I saw only one fight.  They are rare no elk wants to damage their rack of antlers. If they break you could lose all of their females, like I said it is all about the antlers!  This particular fight lasted maybe 5 minutes at the most. These two elk had stood all day on either side of the road bugling at each other as they guarded their harems in tight groups. I had seen these two elk size each other up on numerous occasions and the smaller of the two had always wandered off.  Today junior was feeling his oats and decided to take on his much larger competitor. The larger of the bulls pushed his competitor up the hill as the smaller of the two tried to dig in his heals. They released a few times only to lock antlers again.  As they smashed into each other each elk lost at least two antler points each which is pretty impressive when you think that this is the hardest part of the antler.  Antlers are made from bone and can grow as much as a ¼ of an inch per day.  They smashed into and moved picnic tables which are so heavy it takes about 6 people to move one. After the fight was over the looser went and “sulked” alone on the other side of the road while the victor went back to his females.    

Copyright Peter Zuzga

Copyright Peter Zuzga

 

So, while #10 and #6 have gone to the great prairie in the sky their offspring roam the hills and valleys around Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park. Visitors beware.

 

Photographs used with the permission of Peter Zuzga.  

More Information:
http://www.rmef.org/ElkFacts.aspx

Excuse me, is your dress made out of slime?

Q: What do you do with a bucket of hagfish slime?

A:  If you are a hagfish you use it to gum up the gills and mouths of things trying to eat you.  If you’re a scientist you see if you can make clothing or bullet proof vests out of it.

The hagfish gets no love from most people unless you happen to be a teenage boy with a fascination for all things snot like. A hagfish is an ancient creature older than the dinosaurs which lives in the deep deep depths of the ocean 5,600 feet below the surface feeding on mainly dead things. This blind boneless “fish” has no teeth, but eats by using the hooks on the end of its tongue to rip off pieces of food.  By far the most memorable thing about a hagfish is the SLIME.  I had the chance to see a hagfish and its slime up close and personal one day at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon.  The program presenter had a hagfish in a five gallon bucket. Needless to say the hagfish did not like being moved from one place to another and did what hagfish do when threatened or agitated it oozed slime. This slime comes out though pores in the skin and there can be as many as one hundred on each side of the hagfish’s body. (Check out the a really cool video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb2EOP3ohnE)  The presenter reached in and pulled out the hagfish slime telling us that one hagfish can produce about one gallon of slime at a time! He invited us up at the end of the program to touch his slime. How could I resist.  I grabbed hold of the edge of the slime with two fingers and pulled, it stretched nicely, but then I tried to let go it stuck fast. A few minutes of scraping and a few tissues later I was free of the slime.  

At first glance this clear slime looks a little bit like snot, but unlike mucus this stuff bends and stretches and sticks to everything it comes in contact with.  This is because unlike mucus the hagfish slime has little tiny fibers in the slime which allows it to stretch without breaking. Apparently if you allow hagfish slime to dry it becomes rather silky and can be twisted into thread.  Scientists are currently working in the lab to see if they can replicate the protein structure of the hagfish fibers as a way to make super stretchy fabrics for athletic wear, packing materials, or even bulletproof vests.  Environmentally friendly fabric made from hagfish slime, who would have thought.

 

For more information:

http://www.greenlivingtips.com/eco-news/fish-snot-clothing.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-07/study-finds-fish-snot-fashionable-alternative/4613712
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/347187/description/Repellent_slime_has_material_virtues
http://www.seasky.org/deep-sea/atlantic-hagfish.html
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/lewis_clark01/logs/jul08/media/hagfish.html

Can Caffeine Save The World?

Ever wish you could collect a group of scientists together and suggest a question for them to work on? Ok, maybe it is just me.  Here is the question which has recently sprung into my mind: Would introducing the genes which create the chemical compound caffeine increase crop yields? That’s just crazy you say. Well think about it. Plants have three main problems: 1) getting enough sunlight and nutrients to survive, 2) attracting pollinators, and 3) creating a way to keep from being eaten. Caffeine can help with these problems.

Problem #1: Getting Enough Sunlight and Nutrients

Caffeine is an allelopathic chemical which is known to kill, stunt, or stop seed germination of plants nearby. The caffeine is sent out through the plants leaves, through a process I don’t quite understand, which messes with the respiration of the leaves the plant is trying to kill. Plants can also send out caffeine through the roots into the soil and as the old leaves fall and decompose more caffeine is released into the soil.  From personal experience I can tell you caffeine is a darn effective plant killer. 

In the greenhouse I use to work in we had one raised planting bed with coffee and tea plants and no matter what other plants we tried to grow in that raised bed nothing worked. Once we learned of caffiene’s allelopathic properties we set up a slightly scientific experiment using sterilized soil, grass seed, leaves of the coffee plant and tea plant, and distilled water. We grew three pots of grass and once they had reached a certain size we put the same amount of tea and coffee leaves into a blender with some distilled water and “watered” the two pots of grass with the leaf water. In two months’ time we had killed the grass treated with tea or coffee leaf water.

Problem #2: How to Attract Pollinators.   

Again caffeine appears to help here too especially with honey bees. Dr. Geraldine Wright at Newcastle University in England last month published a paper about how caffeine affected the learning behavior of honey bees. It seems that plants which create nectar with a little bit of caffeine in it get more repeat pollinators. Bees which get nectar with a little bit of caffeine in it seem to remember the plant's smell better. Bees associate the scent of the flower with whatever “buzz” like feeling they get from the caffeine. 

What would be cool here is to take the bees from Dr. Barrett A.Klein's study which he woke up using his “insominator” device and see if giving them a little bit of caffeine in the morning helps them to communicate better with their hive mates about the location of good flowers.

Problem #3: Creating A Way To Keep From Being Eaten

Yep, caffeine is useful here too. If you were to eat straight caffeine you would notice that it has a very unpleasant bitter taste. The bitter taste helps to keep away hungry herbivores and caffeine concentrations in leaves and plant stems can be lethal to many plant eating insects and slugs.

Ok, scientists of the world I have given you something to think about now go see if this all makes any practical sense.

Will someone please figure this out!

Calling all future zoologists will you PLEASE figure out why animals have blue tongues! The scientific community must be asleep because we have been able to find giant squids and document them on camera, launch a rover to Mars, but I still cannot find out why certain animals have blue tongues.   

I recently started thinking about blue tongued animals again because of this picture showing up on my desktop wallpaper.

 

It was taken last October by my friend Peter Zuzga in Yellowstone National Park. We stood in the cold for hours photographing them. When I first saw this picture I just thought the baby bighorn sheep was SOOOO cute. But now she mocks me with her blue tongue every time I see her.

To the World Wide Web I went yet again hoping hoping to find the answer to why some animals have blue tongues.  I bet your wondering “how many animals could possibly have blue tongues?” Well, here are just a few animals which have blue tongues off the top of my head; the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, the blue-tongued skink, polar bears, giraffe, some rattlesnakes, and bison. Let’s breakdown what we know and see if we can make an educated guess as to why bighorn sheep and bison, two of my favorite animals, have blue tongues.

Polar bears are thought to have blue tongues because they have black skin. The black skin is an adaptation they have to help keep them warm in cold climates which has evolved over many many years.  Blue-tongued skinks and rattlesnakes are thought to use their tongue along with hissing and other threatening postures to scare off other animals looking to eat them.  A giraffe is assumed to have a blue tongue as an adaptation to keep it from getting sunburned while the giraffe is pulling off leaves in the desert.  

Ok, now to the bison and bighorns.

As an adaptation to keep them warm? Um, I am going to have to say know. Having seen many bighorn sheep and bison pelts they do not have black skin.  Also bison have extremely thick fur and do not feel cold until the temperatures reach -45 degrees Fahrenheit. 

As a way to scare predators?  Yeah, again no.  Having been snuck up on by a wild bison predators have more reasons to be scared than a tongue. For example size. A male bison can reach 1,000 pounds and a female about 900 pounds. They can run at speed of close to 30 miles per hour and use their heads like a battering ram.  Also bison can leap a 6 foot object from a standing position.   As for bighorn sheep they have horns which also make effective battering rams, they run at speeds of close to 20 miles per hour, and can run down a steep slope with no problem.  Imagine getting one of these animals to stick their tongue out at you. Now I ask you are you scared of that?  

To protect from sunburn?  We may have something here. While there is NO scientific evidence yet to back up this theory it may help protect their tongues from sunburn.  Both bison and bighorn sheep live in environments where there is very little tree cover and a higher elevations where the sun’s rays are more intense, so it might make sense.  I told my theory to a bison biologist friend who told me quite simply “we don’t know why their tongues are that color.”

So, all you scientists and graduate students someone please take up the investigation and find out why animals have blue tongues

Breaking News: Collembola Plunges 300 Feet To Death!

I have been reading The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring by Richard Preston about a group of scientists and who have been mapping and cataloging the plants and animals living in the tops of northern California’s coastal redwoods.   I was shocked to read they found  collembolans in the soil of the fern “forest” growing at the top of a trees over 300 feet tall.  Collembolans at the top of a 300 foot tall tree it blows my mind!  Sadly for me they offer no explanation as to how they got there.

A collembolan or more commonly known as a springtail is a small, really small arthropod which lives in the soil and helps to decompose poop, leaves, fungus, and decaying plant matter.  Bug Guide has some really cool pictures of different collembolans. There are tons of these everywhere in the forest, your backyard, on a soccer or football field, and they can even be seen moving across the water and snow. One scientist estimated there were 300 million per acre in some grassland habitats.   No, way you say there can’t be that many! Take it from me there can be. I spent three years assisting with an invertebrate research study project where my heart sank every time I opened a sample bottle and poured it out to see thousands of dead collembolans floating on the top. By the time the project ended we counted 652,013 from thirteen 100 meter square research plots.  (My record for one sample bottle is 30,000 from one cottage cheese sized container placed in the grass.)  

But, what makes them really cool is how they move when scared, they use a furcula.  Furcula look like either a long or short forked arm that hangs down from the “belly” of the collembola.  When the collembola hits this furcula onto the ground the collembola is sent somersaulting into the air about seven inches off the ground for a distance of about 50-100 times their body length.  So, the largest collembolan at 0.39 inches (10mm) would land almost four inches away from where it leapt from the ground. Downside to furcula propulsion is no steering!  Collembolans have no way to direct where they will land, so if you are living in the top of a redwood tree and are suddenly scared by an invading scientist you might just fling yourself right out of your tree to plunge 300 feet or more to your death!

 

Want to know more:

http://www.collembola.org/

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/library/compendium/collembola.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Sq2gjsysG0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh0ERos22qQ